“What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon.”
Conversation with Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases (20 November 1816), Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, v. 4, p. 251 http://books.google.com/books?id=945jAAAAMAAJ&vq=%22fable%20agreed%20upon%22&pg=PA251. However, the phrase predates Napoleon. Helvétius attributes it to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, De l'esprit (1758), p. 443 http://books.google.com/books?id=N7g8AAAAcAAJ&vq=%22fable%20convenue%22&pg=RA1-PA443
“And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.”
Source: The Pact
“Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?”
Source: The Judges
“The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on.”
Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Coth, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XXVI : The Realist in Defeat
The Silver Stallion (1926)
“It's a lie. I agree with the military experts who say it's a quagmire.”
On the Iraq War. Rebecca Traister. Enough with the vaginas! Salon, 15 September 2004 http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2004/09/15/ensler
“In the lie of truth lies the truth.”
“Truth and Lie,” p. 66
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
as quoted by Paul Krassner in Lenny Bruce: Swear to tell the truth 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/
